Nokia gives Qt open-source governance

Although Nokia still has a hand in developing the software, the ubiquitous Qt graphical toolkit is now 'a true open-source project', meaning developers outside the company can have a larger say in its direction

Qt, the Nokia-owned graphical toolkit used in popular products from Google and Adobe, is now being run as an open-source project, meaning independent developers can have more influence on the direction of the software.

The Qt project, where all
development of Qt
will take place, went live on Friday. Lars Knoll, Nokia's research and development
director, said the move to open governance is a necessary step in making Qt genuinely open
and free from the Finnish
handset maker's control.

"The Qt project is a true open-source project. We are inviting
everybody to participate and help making Qt a better product," Knoll said in a blog
post. "All development will happen in one central location, with
access for everyone at the same time. No more separate code flow for
'Nokians vs others', and no more time delays."

However, the majority of Qt 'approvers and maintainers' are still
Nokia staffers, and those wishing to contribute to the project will
still have to sign a contribution licence agreement (PDF) with the company. Nokia says this is necessary due to existing Nokia and
Trolltech legal obligations.

However, Knoll promised that discussions, decisions and roadmap development
would "all happen in the community, by the community, for the
community".

"You will also notice that we already have some non-Nokians as approvers and maintainers. I'd like to especially mention that Thiago,
the maintainer for QtCore (the one library everybody is using), is not
working for Nokia. This is the most tangible evidence of what open
governance means. I expect and hope to see even more non-Nokians
becoming approvers and maintainers in the future," Knoll said.

'A welcome change'

The creation of the Qt project is "a welcome change", said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation. "This move should allow for participation in the project from a
broad set of developers based on the quality of their code," he said. The shift was also applauded by KDE, which said it had been consulted by Nokia.

Nokia picked up Qt in 2008 when it bought
the company behind the toolkit, Trolltech. The purchase gave Nokia
a set of libraries and tools that could be used to build graphical
user interfaces for both desktop and mobile apps. At the time, existing
implementations included Skype, Google Earth and
Opera.

Nokia made it possible to use Qt for building
Symbian apps at the end of 2009, with Windows 7, Mac OS X Snow
Leopard and Maemo/Meego all getting support at the same time.
Canonical said at the beginning of this year that Ubuntu
will start using Qt, and Research In Motion's upcoming BBX
OS will also have a Qt-based user experience framework called
Cascade.